Strip Club Petitions High Court to Hear Tax Case

With the help of a leading First Amendment litigator, an upstate New York strip club is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether it’s entitled to the same sales-tax exemptions granted to ballets and opera houses.

Albany-area strip club called Nite Moves is challenging the state’s sales-tax policy on constitutional grounds. It’s filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn a ruling by the state’s highest court last year.

The issue is whether the club’s cover charge and three-minute lap dances should be subject to an 8% sales tax. The club argues that the same tax code that exempts “dramatic or musical art performances,” should also apply to strip-club performances, accusing the state of acting as a dance critic.

State attorneys have argued that the nude dancers at Nite Moves aren’t “engaged in a genuine choreographic dance performance.” The New York Court of Appeals ruled against Nite Moves in a 4-to-3 decision in October.

Taking up the club’s cause is Robert Corn-Revere, a veteran litigator from Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, a large Seattle-based law firm with a highly regarded First Amendment practice. Ronald G. London, of counsel to the firm, is also representing the club, as well as Andrew McCullough.

States their petition:

It is difficult to overstate the threat to free expression posed by the government’s misuse of power to levy taxes based on the content of speech or the identity of the speaker…The decision below disregards such concerns and embraces the notion that the government should be allowed to impose higher taxes, or selectively give tax breaks, based on its estimation of the relative ‘value’ of the speech.

Nite Moves CFO Stephen Dick told Law Blog that he realizes the odds are long on the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the case at all. “But we believe our case has as much merit and is as important to free speech nationally as any other that we will be petitioning the court in the next session,” he said.

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